fore now."

He tapped his pipe on the log beside him to knock out the ashes, and
proceeded thoughtfully to fill it up again. This second filling the Babe
had learned to regard as a very hopeful sign. It usually meant that
Uncle Andy was in the vein. Seating himself on the grass directly in
front of his uncle, the Babe clasped his arms around his bare little
brown, mosquito-bitten knees, and stared upward hopefully with grave,
round eyes, as blue as the bluebells nodding beside him.

"Speaking of woodchucks," began Uncle Andy presently, "I've known a lot
of them in my time, and I've almost always found them interesting. Like
some people we know, they're sometimes most amusing when they are most
serious."

"_Amusing_!" exclaimed the Babe, with a world of meaning in his voice.
That was the last word he expected to apply to such a bad-tempered little
beast.

But his uncle paid no heed to the interruption.

"There was 'Young Grumpy,' now," he continued musingly. "As sober-minded
a woodchuck as ever burrowed a bank. From his earliest days he took life
seriously, and never seemed to think it worth his while to play as the
other wild youngsters do. Yet in spite of himself he was sometimes quite
amusing.

"He had the good fortune to be born in the back pasture of Anderson's
Farm. That was where the Boy lived, you know, and where no one was
allowed to shoot the crows. Being a place where no one did any more
killing than was absolutely necessary, it was rather lucky for any of the
Babes of the Wild to be born there--except weasels, of course."

"Why not for weasels?" demanded the Babe.

"Well, now, you might know that without my having to tell you," replied
Uncle Andy. "The weasels are such merciless and murderous little killers
themselves, killing just for the fun of it when they are already too full
to eat what they have killed, that both Mr. Anderson and the Boy had no
sympathy for them, and thought them better out of the way. I don't want
to be too hard, even on a weasel; but I'm bound to say that most of the
wild creatures feel much the same way about that blood-thirsty little
pirate."

"I should think so!" agreed the Babe indignantly, resolving to devote his
future largely to the extermination of weasels, and hoping thus to win
the confidence and gratitude of the kindred of the wild.

"Young Grumpy's home life," continued Uncle Andy, "with his father and
mother and four brothers and sisters was not a p